Collision
by Slywyn
Summary: Born as an experiment, grown into something more, Collision is what happens when Warcraft and an alternate Real Life connect.
1. Prologue and Author's Note

AN: The story as is has been written as it has for an audience who already knows who Slywyn is. For those of you who don't (Which is likely all of you), I've included a bit of background information.

Slywyn Ravenwind is the name of a Warrior from Ashenvale. She's an Engineer and a true fighter. As a Night Elf that's been around for a very long time, 12,000 years give or take a few centuries, she's seen more than most have a right to see. Very little surprises her that she can't take in stride. She's an accomplished melee fighter, and an accomplished engineer.

However, most of that does you little good when you end up somewhere you don't want to be. Or, more accurately, where you were never supposed to be in the first place. Story begins below.

* * *

><p>Sly stepped out of the Deeprun Tram, flexing her jaw. She held her nose and blew, trying to pop her ears. The pressure of the air under the Tram always made her uncomfortable, especially when her ears wouldn't pop on the way over from Stormwind. Sly was meeting a friend to work on and test a new invention they'd been building for a couple of weeks now. The two of them were constructing a teleporter that would not only be able to teleport people, but vehicles as well. Large and powerful enough to transport Steam Tanks and other military equipment, the potential within it was boundless.<p>

All they had to do was get it working. Which is where the story begins.

Sly finally popped her ears, the right one with the missing part drooping much lower than the other. She pulled her hands away from her face, sniffling once to clear her nose. Marred by a long dark scar that ran from her left cheek all the way up to her right temple, Sly had never had much beauty. There was even less left after the incident that gave her the scar knocked her face slightly out of alignment.

It meant that her smile, already crooked from a broken fang, just got even more lopsided. She didn't really mind it all that much. She stepped inside her friend's shop after a very short trip, offering a wave to him before leaning over the plans on the table.


	2. Mishaps

Sly unfurled the plans for her new contraption onto the table, checking things one last time. She scratched her chin with her left hand, her right tapping a certain spot on the plans. "You know, I still don't understand why we need _four _Khorium cores for this, Jinx."

She turned her head to look behind her, at a small (even for a Gnome) Gnome working at a Gnome-sized bench. The Gnome, Jinxilat Spinscrew, was a close friend, and was in fact the Gnome that had taught Slywyn engineering in the first place. He waved a hand over his shoulder. "You have seen the size of this teleporter, haven't you? This could send a Steam Tank all the way to Northrend from the depths of Gnomeregan!" He continued tweaking the power supply, four oblong tubes about six inches in length, to get it all to fit inside the housing.

Sly blew air through her lips, turning back to the plans. "Where did you get these, anyway? I mean, I can get all the way to Northrend from Booty Bay with my Wormhole Generator, and that doesn't even take a core!" She didn't sound worried as much as amused, her eyes flickering over the details on the paper before her.

He raised an eyebrow and turned back to her, stopping his work for a moment. "You do realize that your Generator is using dimensional folding that we don't even fully understand yet." He waved a wrench at her accusingly. "I told you several times not to build it. And yet you did. And what's happened since then?"

Sly sighed. "I dunno, Jinx. Why don't you tell me what's happened? You sure love doing it." She turned around to look at the Gnome, leaning on the bench with her arms acting as supports behind her.

The Gnome ignored, or simply didn't hear, the implied barb, as he launched into what sounded like a well-practiced list. "When in Ulduar, a stray jolt of electricity activated it and teleported half your squad to Sholazaar. Then there's the time where you turned it on by accident, didn't input coordinates, and almost sent yourself to Tanaris. And -then- you actually managed to come back from Outland with it, which is something that I still don't know how you managed to pull off."

Sly frowned a little. "I've told you a dozen times that Ethereal plugged in the coordinates to get me home when I was hurt. _I_don't even know how he did it."

He waggled the wrench at her again. "That's exactly my point! You don't know what he did to make that happen. You haven't been using it since then, have you?"

"Well, no. It still makes a funny sound when you start it up."

"I told you to take that thing apart. It's too dangerous." He frowned and turned back around to continue tinkering, going silent.

Sly shook her head and turned back to the plans, grumbling. "You know, I'm not getting on you about how you pulled these out of a half-destroyed mechagnome's CPU or some shit. Or that they take _four cores_to work."

Sly pursed her lips and continued to look over the plans, then to the large circular device in the corner of the room. "Why'd you pick me to help you with this, anyway?"

Without turning around, he quipped back. "Because you have no imagination and follow plans to exact standards without trying to alter them."

Sly glared at him for a moment. "Fair enough."

Several days later, Slywyn and Jinx stood before the completed teleporter, which now took up most of the room. It looked much like any other location teleporter, but was about three times larger, and was constantly whirring with the power supplied by its cores.

Sly glanced toward Jinx, her hand on the satchel at her side, and a somewhat worried look on her face. "I still don't trust this thing."

He smirked. "That's why you're going first. You have your parachute with you?"

"Yes."

"Teleporter?"

"Yes."

"And you left the Generator at home. ... Right?"

"Right."

"You don't sound so convincing."

Sly glanced back at him, frowning a bit. "You don't trust me?"

"Not really." He stared back.

Sly shifted a bit on the spot. She didn't want to tell him that she did in fact have the Generator on her, hidden wrapped in a sock in the bottom of her satchel. She trusted it more than she let on, having gotten her out of several situations she'd managed to get stuck in before. "Just once, trust me. It's at home."

He let out a sigh and finally nodded, looking back toward it. "Alright. I input the coords from when I tested my teleporter. It should land you just outside of Gadget. But you've got that rebreather I made you. And your parachute. You're wearing your armor. You have a cloak." He was starting to sound somewhat nervous himself. "You've got your sword. Just in case. "Right?" He wrung his hands together.

Sly smirked a little, stepping into the circular 'launching pad' of the teleporter. "Yeah. I've got all that." She felt a slight rumbling from her side, but decided it was just nerves. Or her bag shifting against her leg, as it had done before.

He nodded again, then stepped to the controls. He pushed a button, starting up the power sequence. The humming in the room grew louder as the teleporter surged to life, several tracking arms around the top beginning to spin slowly, measuring and calibrating to the size and mass of the subject within. The teleporter was easily twenty feet in diameter, dwarfing the elf in the center.

Jinx continued the startup sequence, metal screeching against metal as the components jerked and scraped to life for the first time. Lights winked on as the containment field arms swung out from behind the supports, spinning around Slywyn slowly, but steadily picking up speed.

Sly shifted a bit in her spot, the whirring growing louder as all the components began to spin and work faster, steam blowing out from the capacitor as it heated up.

Unbeknownst to both of them, Slywyn's Generator began to react to all the power being unleashed around it, the crystallized elements that acted as it's power source being awakened by the energy in the air. It began to glow within it's sock, the chaotic elements within starting it's own startup sequence.

The twin sets of arms around Slywyn began to spin faster and faster until they were simply a blur. Sly's hair whipped around her back in the vortex created, her cape billowing around her legs and whipping around the platform.

Sly began to feel a pull of sorts, and Jinx's voice came from behind the console. He had to yell to be heard over the commotion of the machine, cupping his hands around his mouth to attempt to amplify the sound. "Ten seconds Sly!"

He punched in a final line of code, and hit the enter key on the console. Whatever happened next couldn't be stopped, the machine moving too quickly at this point for either participant to react.

Five seconds from activation, Jinx watched in horror Slywyn's Generator jumped to life, the portal materializing inside of the teleporter. Slywyn gasped as the dim blue-white light suffused the platform. Whatever she said next, Jinx couldn't hear it. An edge of the portal touched the tracking arms and was instantly stretched as the energy of the portal latched onto the spinning arms, engulfing Slywyn inside it.

With a horrid screeching noise, both devices discharged at the same time, bowling Jinx over as a blast of air radiated from the center. When he picked himself up, his eyes went wide at the state of the teleporter in front of him.

The entire platform was warped in on itself, the tracking arms dripping molten metal onto the floor of the workshop. The containment field arms were bent and warped outward, one of them having sliced through the console when the machine discharged.

The entire teleporter was scrap metal. And Slywyn was nowhere to be found.

"Oh, Cogs." Jinx sighed, putting his face into the palm of his hand.


	3. Arrival

Sly felt like she was being stretched, smashed, burnt, and frozen all at the same time. It was agony and it was bliss, all at the same time. She could feel something pulling her along, almost like there was a rope tied inside her core that she was being pulled along. Something had gone terribly wrong, but she was in no position to try to figure out what it was.

She could almost feel things as they whizzed past her. One moment she felt intense heat that left her feeling crisped, and then there was such intense cold that she could have sworn there was frostbite on her face. She could see flashes of light that made no sense, and then millisecond long flashes of darkness so intense she wanted to recoil from them.

Finally she felt like the rope stuck inside her snapped, or was removed, and felt like she was falling. Her fall was short, and she faceplanted into something hard. Metal scraped against rock as she slammed into the ground, her armor steaming and smoking, while she felt icy cold to her core. She would have shivered would she had been able to move.

The ground around her felt scorched and barren, but she couldn't even bring herself to open her eyes to see what it was. Suddenly, she felt something fly past her head so fast that it had to be something unnatural. Maybe a dragon? She put her hands under herself as a shot of adrenaline at the imminent danger of whatever it was that had just passed her surged through her body.

She opened her eyes, noting that the ground in front of her was black and semi-reflective, before something green and small flew past her face with a high pitched screeching noise and the smell of something she didn't recognize. Something else careened past behind her with a similar sound. She pushed herself from the ground, noting that somewhere along the way her hair had come loose, obscuring her vision.

She could feel her armor around her body was hot enough to possibly be dangerous, but was in too much danger to even consider removing it. As she stood and gained her bearings, two more things streaked past her at speeds she hadn't imagined possible. The only thing that came to mind was a high speed dive out of the skies on Malcarion. But these things were on the ground.

She put a hand out in front of her as a brown one came speeding toward her, but noted dimly in the back of her mind that it wasn't slowing down anywhere near fast enough. She crouched as it approached her, readying herself to jump as that same high pitched squealing came from it. Something on the front of it blinded her as it approached, and she had to guess when to jump.

Slywyn pushed off of the ground as much as she could, leaping straight up into the air. She could catch only the faintest image of... a human? peering out of the thing. The sight startled her so much that she botched the landing, coming down hard on a foot and knee. Another one sped toward her, slowing down, but not nearly fast enough.

Slywyn hopped as well as she could, and she imagined in her mind that she must look something akin to a fish flopping on the ground after being thrown out of the water. The thing, whatever it was, impacted her with the sound of crunching metal and shattering glass. Slywyn had been expecting something a bit more solid, or at least something with less... give.

That didn't make the impact at all less painful, though her armor took the brunt of the impact. And if she wasn't mistaken, the person inside the... whatever it was, had begun screaming. The thing carried her a few feet before finally stopping with a sudden lurch, tossing Slywyn off the front of it to roll on the ground. She groaned, noting somewhere that it had definitely been a human inside of the thing. And that her nose was bleeding, which was likely the least of her injuries judging from the pain she was in.

Sly lay on her side on the ground until something touched her shoulder. She gripped it with her right hand, noting that whoever it was wasn't wearing armor of any kind. Her mind instantly leapt to a Mage, and she knew that if they were readying a spell as retaliation for her destroying their... thing, she was as good as dead.

Fortunately, all the thing in her hand seemed to want to do was scream some more and try to pull away, which wasn't doing it any good. Sly turned her head to look at it, noticing another human. Several of the things that she had seen speeding along the road were stopped around her, parts of them leaning open. She could see the one she'd impacted looked severely damaged, and was leaking steam, among other things.

Slywyn rolled over onto her front and began to stand, all of her joints protesting furiously. Her left arm seemed to be mostly useless, but wasn't bent at any odd angles. Just likely dislocated. She noticed several humans standing around her, but as they began speaking animatedly, she realized she couldn't understand a word they were saying.

It sounded only very very vaguely like Common, but was so far removed from it only the basic sounds remained the same. Try as she might, she couldn't pick out a single word she recognized among the multitudes.

A few of them gasped aloud as Slywyn rose to her full height of near seven feet. It seemed that while she was in a great deal of pain, the only limb with any severe damage was her left arm, which hung loosely at her side. It was dark, but that didn't affect her much other than dimming her vision slightly.

She turned her head, and several more of them yelled something and pointed at her head. It seemed they'd noticed her ears. Sly tried to speak, her voice hoarse, either from the cold or heat, or just the method of transport, she couldn't tell which. She tried Common, Darnassian, Draconic, every language she knew, but their sounds only grew louder as more of them approached and began speaking.

Suddenly, flashes began to emanate from the crowd. Slywyn caught a glimpse of some kind of handheld device and dove, expecting projectiles or spells to go flying past at any moment. She rolled and tried to come up, forgetting momentarily that her left arm was useless. She fell to the ground with the sound of metal grinding on the stone as she slid, her momentum carrying her through the crowd.

Several more screamed, the crowd backing away from her and scattering. Sly shakily pushed herself to her feet, realizing that there was a stand of trees not far away. One of them pointed to the sword strapped to her back and yelled something she still didn't understand, and Slywyn decided that it was time to get away. She lowered her shoulder and charged for the treeline, cradling her left arm with her right as she bowled several of them over.

The din of the crowd faded swiftly as Slywyn sprinted at her top speed into the cover of the trees, and she was dimly aware that several impressed-sounding exclamations followed her.


	4. Trees

Slywyn crept through the stand of trees, which only seemed to be something like one hundred feet wide, and strangely straight. She could hear more of those things whizzing by with their odd humming noises. They sounded almost like the steam engines she knew from home, but they had a much deeper note than what she recognized.

The entire area smelled awful. Now that she had a moment to herself, she felt like she could feel the smell burning into her nose and dimming her sense of smell somehow. It was acrid and seemed to suffuse everything in the area.

She let her eyes travel over the trees, confirming something she'd already gathered from glances. None of these trees looked remotely like any species she recognized from home. Oddly enough, though, some of them looked strangely similar to some of the trees from Elwynn and the rest of the Human-controlled areas.

This, among a few other factors such as the strange machines, led Slywyn to believe that she was no longer on Azeroth. But this didn't look anything like Outland, and she didn't recognize any of the sky above her, when she could catch glances of stars between the cloud cover.

She noticed that the moon above looked very different as well, both a different size and color from the ones she knew. The only option left to decide based on all the information she had, was that she was somehow in an entirely different part of the Great Dark Beyond than she had been before.

Sly could really only blame herself for this. If she hadn't brought along her Worm Hole Generator, she likely would be in Gadgetzan right now enjoying a drink and some sun while she waited for a Gryphon to fly her back home. She let out a sigh, deciding not to dwell on the problems anymore, and instead try to figure out some kind of solution.

First thing she needed to do was fix her arm. The entire time she'd been walking, she had been scanning the trees and underbrush for something suitable. She needed a crook or a divide in a tree that she could wedge her arm into.

Now that her adrenaline was fading, she could feel that she'd probably need to fix her arm soon, or the pain would just get worse. As of right now it was just radiating from her shoulder joint, but at a level she could deal with. She could already feel it spreading though, meaning she didn't have long before it would get bad enough to cloud her thinking.

Making matters worse was the fact that she could very vaguely hear things moving in the brush behind and off to the side, in the direction from which she had come. They were looking for her. Normally, she'd be able to travel in such a way that she could leave minimal tracks, if any at all. But being in her suit of armor, and having crashed into the brush as she did, she knew that she was leaving a much clearer track than she had been trained to do.

She could hear some kind of high pitched whining sound in the back of her mind, and wondered what exactly it could be. The sound changed seemingly at random, but the randomness would be followed with some kind of pattern. Thinking about it was making her head hurt, which she mostly attributed to the growing pain in her shoulder.

It also seemed like she was running out of trees, as before her she could see that the line of trees she was in ended a few hundred feet ahead. There looked to be some kind of dip in the land that just didn't seem entirely natural to her.

As she crept closer, a bit of a grim smile crept onto her face as she spotted what she needed. She smirked a bit, thinking quietly to herself. "Even on worlds removed from mine, you can always trust the forest to provide."

Just a few feet off of the general path she'd chosen was a pair of trees entwined with each other. They'd grown too close together, and had fused and split apart several times, eventually splitting and growing into two separate trees, though their bases were conjoined. Just about half a foot below Slywyn's chest level, they had finally split, leaving a somewhat oddly shaped V that she could use.

Sly winced in pain, gritting her teeth to keep from making any noise, and raised her injured left arm, placing it inside of the crook of the tree. Grunting in pain with each blow, she used her right arm to knock on her left, and wedge it into the gap as much as she could. Then, bracing herself for what she knew was to come, she put all her weight into the tree, trying to shove her arm back into socket.

It was something she'd only ever had to do once, hundreds of years ago when she fell from a free due to some moss she hadn't seen that forced her to lose her grip. She'd smacked her shoulder on the way down hard enough to knock it out of place. But that time she'd had someone to help her, and now she was on her own.

She gasped in pain, her knees going weak, on only the first shove. She apparently missed, or didn't use enough force, and she felt like someone had stabbed a knife into her shoulder. Her face grew damp as she struggled to remain standing, the pain searing all through her left shoulder and arm. She gathered herself for a moment, fighting against the pain, and pushed again, with as much strength as she could muster.

It seemed her luck held, for with a sickening grinding noise that made her stomach lurch, and a bit of a quiet pop, she felt her shoulder pop back into place. She went as limp as she could against the tree, being held up by her arm wedged into the crook. Her chest heaved, her nostrils flaring, as most of the pain faded from her shoulder and arm.

After a moment, she was able to gather her legs under her and stand, though she was much shakier than she would have liked to be. Her left arm was still in a rather large amount of pain, but it was back down to the tolerable level it had been before, and she'd be able to move on.

She pulled her arm free from the tree, wincing a bit as she looked over the damage her armor had done to the bark. Not only was the damage somewhat unnecessary, it would be a clear sign of her presence to anyone trying to find her.

She dimly noted that the strange whining sound had grown quite a bit louder, and she realized that it was coming from without, rather than within, as she had suspected. Somewhat relieved that she wasn't just hearing things, she continued toward the break in the trees.

She moved a bit slower, trying to leave as hard a trail to follow as possible. When she came to the break in the trees, she realized that the strange road the things had been moving on had a twin, where more of the things streaked by in the opposite direction. It was some kind of one-way pathway system that the engineer in her wanted to study. But she knew she didn't have nearly enough time to stand around and observe.

Sly crouched and crept toward the strange dip, separated from the trees by a good fifty feet or so of open ground. Thankful that she had chosen to keep her armor with a matte finish rather than something shiny like many of the Humans chose, she made her way to the dip.

She peered over the edge once she arrived, a bit confused that the sides of it seemed to be some kind of incredibly flat stone that she didn't recognize. It was far too uniform in composition to be natural and smelled very very dimly of Human when she put her nose near it. It was laid in slabs, creating some kind of aqueduct that water flowed through.

With a shrug after her brief examination of the stone, she slid down it as quietly as she could manage, the only sound being of metal scraping against stone. Once in the bottom and holding herself just out of the water as she lay against the stone, she was faced with some kind of choice. She had noticed off in the distance that there was a strangely large amount of light radiating up into the night, presumably from a city of settlement of some kind. That was to her right, and to her left, she had noticed more woods and a lack of the same kind of light, though there seemed to be light everywhere in this world.

She decided to go right toward the city/settlement, wanting to know more about where she was. And she figured it might be easier to find some kind of shelter nearer something like that. If these Humans were anything like the ones she knew from Stormwind, they were likely to leave empty houses or shelters littering the landscape once their owners had moved on.

Dimly noting in the back of her mind that she felt strangely weak and tired for such a comparatively small amount of physical exertion, Sly slid into the water and crept her way downstream, making her way toward the city.


	5. Dude

"Dude, I'm telling you. That's what it was."

"You're insane."

"Come on! Look at iiiiit." Dwayne pointed at the computer monitor, where something big and covered in blue metal was glaring at the camera phone. The image was blurry, but it was just one of hundreds that had been popping up from the incident on Interstate 90 yesterday.

Colin turned to stare at the same picture Dwayne had been poring over for the last hour. "I'm -telling- you, you're _insane_. Night Elves don't exist, dude. You're just trying to turn your ridiculous fanboyism into something real. Someone photoshopped a picture. Or something."

"Dude. Come on. It was on the news. They wouldn't report something like a photoshopped picture on the news. Have you seen how many pictures there are? Someone has to have gotten a video."

Colin plopped down on the couch to stare at the same news channel they'd been watching since the story broke yesterday. Something about seven feet tall had flashed into existence over the I-90 late yesterday afternoon, falling to the roadway. Government vehicles were already swarming the scene, and the interstate from Montana to Illinois had been shut down to keep vehicles off of it.

There was some kind of scorch mark in the asphalt where the thing had landed, and there were still pictures of the totaled car that it had hit, even if the car itself had been confiscated. The craziest part of the story to most people was that the thing had been wearing some kind of blue-colored armor, and had sprinted off into the trees at Olympic speed after being hit by a car.

"Dude..." Dwayne's voice came from over by the computer. "Someone got a video."


	6. Home?

Slywyn had walked most of the night, sticking to the river as long as possible. She didn't know who was following her or how long they'd remain after her, so she was using as much caution as her considerable knowledge in woodcraft would allow.

She was steadily working her way toward the city she had guessed was there, and could tell it would be nearing morning soon. She couldn't tell which direction she was travelling, as she couldn't just assume that their sun rose and set in the same direction as Azeroth's did. She hadn't seen a moon, so either they didn't have one, or it just hadn't ever come into view.

She'd climbed a tree just about an hour ago by her guess, and checked the distance on what she'd presumed to be a city. She'd noticed the same glow, though slightly dimmer, and kept toward it. At her best guess she'd reach it in another hour or so of travelling.

She still couldn't shake the feeling that she'd felt somewhat... diminished since she'd arrived. Like something was missing, but she just couldn't place what. She was getting tired faster than she would have normally, her armor felt heavier. She almost felt like she was getting sick, but that shouldn't be possible. And it was moving a lot faster than any sickness she knew of other than the plague.

Up ahead she could see some kind of rickety old building near where the tree cover started getting thinner. As she made her way closer, she could smell the distinct smell of moldering wood and rusting metal. This building had clearly been abandoned for some time.

When she reached it, she remained hidden for some time, just to make sure there wasn't anyone inside hiding. When she couldn't hear, see, or smell anyone, she made her way to it.

As soon as she stepped inside she knew it wouldn't serve for any kind of shelter. The floor felt like it would give way under her footsteps at any moment, and the roof looked like it was going to give way under the next storm. She'd have to get closer to the town if she wanted to find anything.

* * *

><p>Colin jumped off of the couch and covered the distance to the computer as quickly as he could, his eyes glued to the screen. Dwayne had pulled up a video on YouTube, taken from someone's phone. Dwayne spoke first as the video loaded. "I told you, man. It's a Night Elf. Just look at her."<p>

Colin couldn't dispute him. She looked exactly like the game had portrayed them. Tall, purple-tinted skin, with glowing silvery eyes. "Man... I can't believe what I'm seeing."

Dwayne looked back to him and grinned widely before hitting "Play" on the video. The elf onscreen stood, then looked over the crowd. There was too much noise to hear what she was saying when her mouth moved, and when she took off through the crowd the camera lost sight of her. But that was enough for both of them.

"Cooooooooooooooooooooool!" They both blurted out at almost exactly the same time.

* * *

><p>It was now sometime around midmorning, and Slywyn had been scouting the outskirts of town. She'd come across something rather strange as she made her way in a very wide circle. It seemed these Humans lived in very regimented housing at the edges of their towns, but built extremely artificial dwellings for themselves, with a great deal of individual customization.<p>

She'd found several more of the moving things, and had some time to examine an abandoned one of them in much greater detail. She'd drawn the inside workings of it on a few sheets of paper, but had been unsuccessful in taking it apart. The bolts and fittings had been too rusted, and breaking them would have made far too much noise.

She'd scavenged some parts off of something else she'd found, though she didn't know if they'd prove any use. As she'd been hiking through the woods earlier, she'd made a short stop to examine her Wormhole Generator. Not only did the elemental parts powering it seem to be completely dead, but the inner workings were fried. She wasn't about to get home any time soon unless she seriously got to work on it. And she had no parts.

As she made her way around more of the outskirts of town, she'd caught sight of a few signs. It worried her that the writing was completely unrecognizable. She'd hoped to find something familiar in the writing, but that just didn't seem to be the case.

Eventually, though, she found another small building. This one seemed much more recently abandoned, as well. It was down a short road just outside of one of the strangely arranged housing districts, around a bend and completely fenced in by trees. The road that led to it was dirt, meaning she could check every time she made her way back for tracks. Just in case.

Even better, there was one of those machines outside. Only slightly rusted, this one could prove to be much more fruitful for her examinations. The door was another strange contraption. It was broken up into three parts. The top was glass, then there was glass covered by metal mesh, and then a metal square. It creaked incredibly loudly when she tried to open it, so she'd chosen to go around back where there was a more-conventional wooden door with a small diamond-shaped glass window covered by metal foil of some kind.

The entire building itself was on deflated rubber wheels like the machines were, and smelled of mildew and the very beginnings of decay. If anything on this world worked like it did at home, she could guess that it'd been abandoned at most a year ago.

Luckily it seemed sound, and in her quick and furtive examination of the other rooms she hadn't found evidence of any kind of inhabitant. Everything was covered in an undisturbed layer of dust. Many new and exciting things had been found inside as well, contraption after contraption practically littered the building.

But first things first, she needed rest. She ventured back outside, taking some cut-up cans she'd found in a cabinet with her. They were red with white markings and more writing she couldn't read. The liquid inside had smelled foul, and tasted worse. It fizzed when she drank it, and she could barely convince herself she hadn't been poisoned. But so far, other than a slightly upset stomach, she hadn't noticed any ill effects.

After littering the dirt around the front and back doors with many cut up pieces of the metal and then covering those with dirt, she returned inside. There had been a spool of thread inside one of the drawers, which she then tied to a tree across the pathway toward the house. She looped it around another tree, then ran the line under a window that she cracked only slightly. She tied it to another of the cans that she'd filled with the pieces of metal, and set it next to the bed. If anyone were to trip across it, it would jostle the metal in the can and wake her.

Slywyn remained in her armor, but crawled into the bed. She felt as if she'd been awake for days, even though it had only been one, and in a battle besides. When she flopped onto the bed she stirred up a cloud of dust that had her coughing for a few minutes, but when she finally settled down she was out like a light before her head had really had time to settle on the pillow.

* * *

><p>Colin's phone rang, and he groaned. He rolled over in the bed, glancing at his clock. Almost midnight. And he had work tomorrow! That asshole better have a good reason. "Yeeeees?"<p>

"Dude, Colin. She's disappeared." Dwayne's voice rang out clear through the earpiece.

"What? I don't care. I have work!" He pinched his nose between his finger and his thumb.

"No, dude. You don't understand. _They can't find her._It's like she's dropped off the face of the earth. They followed her trail to a river under the interstate and then they lost it. Dogs, helicopters with infrared, manned searches, none of them turned up single a trace. They've given up."

Colin groaned again. "Why do you care?"

"They released a map of the area she was found. It was right outside of town, dude. Like, just east of here. The whole town's been alerted. They think she's dangerous because she was carrying a sword. No one has a fucking clue, dude. They're all stumped. The government's been collecting statements from people who were there. They've been pulling the pictures and video off the internet, man. It's gone. I think they're scared."

"Give it up, man. I know what you're thinking. And you're an idiot."

"Come on! You know what kind of chance that could be? What if we-"

"No." And then Colin hung up the phone, lying back in his bed.


	7. Suits

Slywyn sat up slowly. She felt mostly rested, but like she'd been hit by a steam tank. Which, now that she thought about it, wasn't really all that far from the mark. Her joints ached, her head was throbbing, and when she wiped her hand across her face, she realized she'd had a minor nosebleed at some point.

All in all, she was in pretty rough shape. On a world she knew next to nothing about, hiding out in a building on wheels that hadn't been touched in ages, in less than stellar fighting condition, with the only way home she was aware of nonfunctioning. She took stock of her current situation. It sucked. And to top it all off, she felt sick. She'd been sick all of once in her life, and it was one of the least pleasant experiences she'd ever had the privilege of having. She really didn't need a problem like that on top of everything else.

She checked the can near her bed, her day brightening just a fraction when she saw it was completely undisturbed. She pushed off of the bed, groaning. Her back was stiff. While the bed had seemed soft at first, there were metal springs inside it that had poked and prodded her all night, hard enough for her to tell through her armor. And they made her sleep awkwardly, being used to sleeping on feather or straw mattresses.

It was well past sundown outside, and she could barely make out the stars in the sky. It saddened her, even if she didn't recognize any of them. She made her way into what she guessed was the kitchen. This is where food was, even if the vast majority was far gone from being edible. She opened some of the cabinets and cupboards, checking what she had on hand that she could probably eat. There were pictures on some of the cans and boxes of things that looked slightly familiar. Carrots, some vegetables of other kinds, and there even looked to be a can of soup.

There was a sink buried in the counter, instead of standing free like she'd seen in most Human homes before. She opened the door underneath, noting the plumbing. Some of the homes in Stormwind had had a much more rudimentary system than this seemed to have, and there were more pipes than she was used to. Just to check, she turned the faucet on one of them, and strangely enough water flowed.

It looked dirty and smelled of rust, but it was running. She frowned a little, but was buoyed by the fact she wouldn't have to go drink from a river of indeterminate sewage content. If the water would run clean any time soon, that is. She turned it off, deciding to leave it alone for now.

She walked to a small switch on one of the walls, curious as to what it was for. She flipped it and immediately switched it back off when lights in the room came on. Surprised and a little afraid she'd set off some kind of trap, she crouched in the room to wait.

She gave it about five minutes with no movement before she stood back up. Apparently this place also had electricity, though from what she'd seen the lights here were much brighter than anything Gnomes had been able to produce so far. She wondered if she'd ever run out of strange things to find and study here.

After a few more minutes of exploring, she'd found another few rooms with more objects she didn't understand, a room that was apparently used for bathing, and another bedroom on the other end of the building. It was completely empty save for a bed, devoid of some of the little knickknacks and other things she'd seen in the first.

Now outside, Slywyn made her slow way down the dirt path to the house, checking to be sure there weren't any new tracks. Other than those of a deer, she didn't see anything. Though she happily took note of the fact that wildlife existed here.

Satisfied that no one had found her yet, she returned to the mobile home. She'd decided to call it that even though it didn't seem capable of self-movement, simply because it possessed wheels. Even if those wheels were deflated, dry rotted, and useless.

Making her way to the kitchen area, Slywyn took out her small pocket knife and set about opening a few of the cans to try to find something to eat. She tried the soup she'd seen first, getting a bit on her finger for a taste-test. She almost choked on the amount of salt in it, closing the can as best she could and setting it back on the counter for later.

However, none of the cans fared much better. It seemed everything in a can was heavily salted like marching meat had been when she'd been in the Sentinels. With a grimace she ate cold canned food, though if she set the factor of much salt on the side, the food itself wasn't all that horrible. All the bagged, boxed, or otherwise open food had spoiled long ago, and there was a large white box with two doors that she was dreading opening.

Even though it was closed and seemed to be sealed, there was a horrible smell coming from it that she suspected was from more rotting food. She reached into her satchel that she was still wearing at her side, and dug around for a minute. She pulled free her collapsible multi-tool that she'd built about a year ago. It had a shovel, an axe, a wire cutter, and a hammer. She'd built it after a customer had requested something similar for camping use, and she'd kept one around for her own uses. It was made of a mix of Mithril and Steel, making it both strong and light. And somewhat expensive.

After a few minutes of searching through the building, she came up with a large enough box to use to put all the food inside, and then piled everything she could carry that was rotten into it. She brought that outside, and set about digging a hole big enough to bury that food and quite a bit more she suspected to reside elsewhere in the house.

* * *

><p>Earlier that morning, Dwayne's doorbell rang, and he pulled his headphones off to go see who it was. Making his way through his house in his socks, he opened the door. He blinked several times, a bit confused. There was a guy in a suit, complete with sunglasses and militarily-short haircut.<p>

They stared at each other for a moment before the guy produced a picture. Dwayne's mouth fell open as he recognized the elf from the video he'd seen yesterday. The guy spoke first. "I see you recognize it." He pulled a notepad and a pen from a pocket on his suit. "We're investigating a matter of national security, and based on your town's proximity to the initial crash site we're going door to door to find out as many details as we can. If you could please provide me with any information you may have, it would help us immensely. No detail is too small."

Dwayne blinked a few times, a bit taken aback by the guy's attitude and dress, both completely cool and professional. It reminded him of the Men in Black. "Uh... we heard about a car crash on the news, and then all those pictures that got onto the internet about it, and then we saw a video."

"I see. Could you please tell me who 'we' are and what exactly you saw in the video?"

Dwayne scratched his head. "Colin is my friend. The both of us watched the video and the news about it. He's at work though?"

The Suit nodded, writing all of this down. "And what exactly did you see in the video?"

Dwayne could feel his cheeks heating up a bit. He was about to reveal his nerd-status to some government suit on his doorstep. "Well, it looked a lot like one of the elves from a game that came out a few years ago. Warcraft? Maybe you heard of it? The company went under a couple of years later, but I swear she looks exactly like the elves from the game."

The guy's mouth drew into a thin line, and then his head tilted down a few degrees to look at Dwayne over his sunglasses. His hand began scribbling all the information down, even if his expression was skeptical. "I'm going to take your name down, if you don't mind. Any information you can provide could be critical in our investigation."

Dwayne nodded a few times, now confused. The guy's expression had shifted from bored, to skeptical, to curious, before it walled up again to look bored. He stood up straight, looking to the side of the door where Dwayne's house number was. He wrote that down too, before turning back to Dwayne. "Thank you for your assistance. Have a nice day." He turned on his heel, moving back down the pathway from the sidewalk to Dwayne's house before moving on to the next house down the street.

"Huh..." Dwayne shrugged his shoulders a little before shutting the door and heading back inside to get some lunch. "They sure seem worried."

* * *

><p>Slywyn was back inside 'her' building, resting a bit. All she'd done was dig a hole and then bury the rotten food, and she felt drained and tired. The large white box had been cleaned too, though it had given her quite a shock when she pulled it open. She tried the top door first simply because it had looked smaller, hoping that would also mean less work.<p>

When she pulled the door open, she'd been met with a blast of cold air. She had hurriedly shut the door again, thinking it was some kind of magical trap. But when nothing inside exploded or made any other noise than the dim hum that the whole thing was making, she pulled it back open.

The entire inside of it was caked with ice, which amazed her. The building itself was cool, but not cold. Definitely nowhere near cool enough to support ice inside of the thing. There had been food inside of it, but it was all frozen completely through and covered in frost. However, none of it had seemed expressly _bad_, so she left it in there. As long as they stayed frozen, she didn't see any reason why they'd be particularly in danger of spoiling. And some of it was meat.

The larger door, however, was a different story entirely. Practically the whole thing was full of rotting or rotten food, and she'd had to plug her nose to work past the smell. The entire contents had been buried outside, along with the towel she'd wet in the sink to wipe it out. It wasn't perfectly clean, but at least it wasn't leaking a stench like it had before.

She didn't know exactly how long she'd be staying in this place, but she'd decided to at least make it habitable in the meantime. It wouldn't do her much good to ignore a problem now and have it come back to bite her in the ass later.

After venturing back outside, she'd discovered a small shed just inside of the treeline. It was full of bees, but aside from that it was practically a treasure trove of machinery and tools. She'd had to force herself to not make a sound, as she wanted to scream for joy. Many of the tools were things she recognized. Wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers. Most of the tools she was going to need to fix her wormhole generator. The problems were going to be parts, wiring, and power. Power would be the largest problem by far.

Something else she noticed about this place was the seeming lack of magic of any kind. She'd done some very minor studies in the Arcane when she was younger. Just enough to detect magic. This place seemed entirely devoid of any kind of magic at all. She vaguely pondered if that's why she felt so tired.

Without any source of magic in the smallest amount, she wondered if she'd feel any effects, and how badly. Night Elves were magical creatures by nature, having grown up near the Well on Azeroth. It was something she'd never understood about the banning of magic. They used it every day, and yet all those sources remained. The only thing that'd vanished was the Highborne.

She shook her head, deciding she had bigger problems than magical quandaries centuries removed in the past. She headed back inside the house, deciding to try and take stock of what else she had in her possession here.


	8. Oops

Jinx stood inside the destroyed lab in Ironforge. He'd just been allowed back inside after Ironforge officials, among Gnomish technicians, had examined the area for any kind of radiation or power leak that could be dangerous to the city as a whole.

They'd left the wreckage alone at his request, not that there was a whole lot left to salvage anyway. He was taking stock of the damage, noting which parts would need to be replaced, which ones were salvageable, and which would need to be rebuilt completely. He frowned a bit when he noticed the half-destroyed console blinking at him.

He took a few steps toward it, scribbling some notes and half-baked plans for rebuilding. He wasn't focusing overmuch on what exactly the console had to say, until he noticed the depleted power source was trying weakly to broadcast coordinates. He blinked in confusion. If she had been eaten by a wormhole, then there shouldn't be exit coordinates.

He quickly scribbled down the numbers on a clean part of the paper, then ripped the piece off carefully. He put it in a pocket of his jumpsuit, saving it for later.

Jinx looked up at the machine again. If the machine had managed to procure exit coordinates in the moment between the wormhole opening and the machine's destruction, that meant that an exit had been found and she hadn't been simply ejected into the Nether to die. This also left the very vague possibility that she was alive.

He pursed his lips a bit. He'd have to call in a few favors to get the machine rebuilt. But he'd do it the right way this time. No mistakes with unsupported wormhole generators. Their experiment, while surprising, unexpected, and disastrous, had proven something Gnomes had been unsure about for about a year. Dimensional folding and teleportation sciences could work together.

* * *

><p>Slywyn was not far from 'her' homebuilding/base, exploring the town in the night. She'd decided that exploring at night was going to be much easier than exploring during the day after a few quick observations suggested that the humans here were diurnal instead of nocturnal like her own people.

She was currently poking around a fenced in area of one of the houses after having carefully climbed the fence. It seemed that a rather large amount of them fenced off areas of vegetation, essentially claiming parts of the wildlife as their own. She didn't approve, but it wasn't like she was in any position to do anything about it.

She'd had a run in with a dog in one of the fenced off areas, though it was much much smaller than similar dogs on Azeroth. It also appeared to be much less threatening, and of a breed she didn't recognize. So much here was so strange, she noted for probably the hundredth time since arriving.

She crept up to a window in the house she was currently skulking around, peering through the glass. She saw a few items that looked similar to things she'd seen back at the house she'd claimed, but most of them looked much sleeker and newer than what she had.

Satisfied with her cursory examination of the buildings around the little base she'd established, she updated the small map she'd drawn to help her return. The pathways with more of the strange stone she'd noted at the dual pathways with the fast-moving machines were drawn out, as they seemed like the main ways of getting around.

It reminded her very much of Stormwind's streets and pathways, but excessively refined. A light shone from around a corner, and Sly crouched down behind a bush to watch. One of the machines rolled down the street with an audible hum of some kind of engine before pulling up to one of the buildings.

A human opened a hatch in the side, climbed out, and then shut the hatch again. Once he'd made his way into the building, Sly crept over to examine the machine. Many parts of it seemed hot, or at least warm, meaning that it ran off of some kind of combustion or heat source. The exhaust pipe smelled acrid, and was radiating so much heat she didn't want to get near it.

In contrast to the machine outside the building she'd claimed, the inside of this one was new looking and smelled of leather instead of rust and mold. There were dials and buttons and switches of all kind that seemed to be for myriad uses. She drew a quick sketch before crouching low and making her way back to the treeline to venture home, her curiosity satisfied for now.

Certain to skirt her tripwire, and making sure that there were no new tracks in the pathway to her home, Sly made her way inside. She made a mental note to improve the defenses around it soon, perhaps the next night. As she walked through the kitchen area she heard a strange kind of _"whump whump"_sound she only vaguely recognized.

Sly tilted her head at an angle to try to hear better. The sound was getting louder and deeper, implying that whatever it was was coming closer. As it passed overhead, a bright searchlight passed over her building. Sly threw herself to the floor, her heart pounding.

As the thing passed on, she recognized the sound of it. It sounded just like her whirligig that she'd built, though it appeared that the rotors spun much faster and powerfully than her own did. She was rather curious as to what they were using as a power source. She hadn't seen evidence of water tanks or power cores on any of the machinery. As a matter of fact, the engines didn't seem to have any power sources at all.

She shook her head, climbing up from the floor and dusting herself off. Now that she suspected that Nordrassil's blessings no longer had any effect whatsoever, she guessed that she'd have to clean this place up a bit to avoid some kind of infection or sickness. Especially since a place like this was likely to have diseases she'd have no defense against.

She frowned a little and glanced around the room. There was a lot of dust. Deciding to do it later, she moved back into what seemed to be the main room of the building. There were two couches against walls, and something with a large screen and a bunch of buttons. She guessed that it was some sort of video screen, based on similarities to things she'd seen in Tinkertown and Gnomeregan after it was partly retaken.

Deciding to leave it alone, especially since she didn't know exactly what it was for, she sat on the carpeted floor and dumped out her satchel. Aside from her wormhole generator, she had a few other things. A parachute, her multitool, her hammerpick and Gnomish Army Knife. Multiple teleporters, which all seemed strangely nonfunctional, as well as her goggles, a few knives of differing sizes, a few samples of food she'd forgotten in the depths of her bag for far too long, and a change of clothes. There were a few other minor things, but nothing worth much notice.

Then, attached to her armor in various places, were her handheld High-Powered Bolt gun, combat knife, screwdriver, wrench, and boot knife. Her crossbow was folded against her thigh, bolts secured under it. Satisfied with her personal inventory, even though the majority seemed useless to her, she stowed everything away back where it needed to be.

She looked up at the ceiling as she heard several more things fly overheard. More than a little curious, she decided against going to look and putting herself more at risk. She looked back at the state of the building. She'd set about cleaning and making this place more habitable while she could.

* * *

><p>Dwayne groaned, rolling over in his bed and looking at his clock. 6:30 in the morning, and someone wanted his attention. He rubbed at his eyes, slipping on a pair of slippers. It was the last day of the weekend, and he'd been looking forward to sleeping most of the day before he had to go back to work the next day.<p>

He padded to the door and pulled it open, only to be mostly blinded by more than one light pointed in his direction. He raised his arm to block the light, and gasped. There were three Suits standing right in front of his door, and more around. One of them flashed a badge.

"We've been told you may have information on the extraterrestrial that landed two days ago. Would you come with us please, sir?" They didn't wait for an answer, taking Dwayne by his arms and frog marching him toward several waiting SUVs.

"Hey! Wait a second!", Dwayne was angry and more than a little confused.

One of the men faced him, then pulled open the door to the backseat of one the SUVs. Colin waved meekly before the man pushed Dwayne's head down and forced him into the seat.

"Sorry, sir. Matter of national security." Dwayne looked out the window to see several more Suits entering his house before the SUV pulled away from the curb.

Colin's voice came from beside him. "What the fuck did you do this time?"


	9. What

The third day after her arrival on the planet, Slywyn woke sore and tired. She'd cleaned her strange home from top to bottom after concluding that her environment was probably what was causing her to feel ill. She didn't bother to sit up. She felt awful.

Sly looked over to the can tied to her tripwire, and it was undisturbed. She let out a groan and finally prodded herself into sitting up. She put a hand to her forehead and let her head rest in her hand for a moment. She felt sick, limp, and drained. Her whole body ached, her stomach was roiling even though she hadn't eaten last night, and she felt like she was cooking in her armor.

She pulled herself out of her bed, stumbled a bit and bumped into the wall. She hung there for a moment, supporting herself against the steadiness of the wall. Her vision was spinning and she felt lightheaded. She continued to the kitchen. She still had no idea what was causing her to feel this way. Was it the food? Was it some kind of sickness brought on by the warphole? Was it a disease?

She groaned and peered out the window. It was raining. Sly leaned her face against the window, feeling the cool caress of the glass. She shut her eyes, remaining there until her heated skin began to heat the window. Once the coolness was gone, she continued her journey down the hallway. She wanted something to settle her stomach.

Her objective was a sealed pack of crackers she'd seen in the kitchen. Once when she was a little girl, her mother had made some thin wafer crackers that had helped settle her stomach when she ate a rotten fruit. Once she'd let them sit for a while and soak up whatever had been making her feel awful, her stomach had settled. She almost wished her mother was here. Her legs felt like they didn't have the strength to reach the kitchen.

Sly could almost feel her temperature rising the more she walked, and she began shedding her armor. Attackers be damned. She couldn't fight them off in this condition anyway. And if she was going to die, at least she'd die comfortable if she couldn't fight.

Shaking her head to try to clear the melodramatic thoughts, Sly finally reached the kitchen. She yanked open the cabinet door, pausing for a moment as she was almost overcome by nausea. She stuck her hand into the cabinet once the nausea had mostly faded, then pulled free the package. She tore it open, the plastic giving her immense amounts of trouble when it would have been child's play before.

One problem. When Sly stuffed the crackers into her mouth, she realized that her mouth was suffering from pretty much the same problem the rest of her was. It was really really hot. And she couldn't remember the last time she'd had something to drink.

Her eyes scanned the kitchen as her mouth crunched on the now-incredibly-sticky cracker paste that was in danger of beginning to choke her. She'd even take one of the horrible red cans. If she hadn't drained all of them, that is. Sly lurched her way toward the sink. The water'd begun to run clear last night, even if it tasted like Stormwind's canal water that was used for sewage.

Sly stuck her face into the faucet and turned it on, trying to wash down the cracker-y mess she'd gotten herself into. She gulped water as soon as she could, eventually clearing the blockage in her mouth. Even though, now, she felt as if she had giant chunks of cracker still stuck everywhere. Which she did.

As she turned away from the counter, the nausea hit her again. Her knees gave out and she collapsed to them, bent over herself and dry heaving on the floor. What the hell was going on? And then, out of nowhere, the heat returned. This time, however, she literally felt like she was on fire. Sly gasped for breath, her chest restricting in the heat.

Her head swiveled, looking for anything she could to relieve the terrible heat, when the door caught her eye. Sly half crawled, half stumbled her way to the door before she pulled it open. Unable to stand, she simply tumbled down the steps into the rain. And landed right on the shredded remains of the cans she'd put there for her defense.

Slywyn couldn't even muster a groan of dim pain, as far into the grip of fever as she was. She rolled off the cans and simply turned herself onto her back, her face up into the rain. Her hair was splayed behind her like a fan, and she was completely exposed, but she didn't care. The rain felt like a miracle from the Goddess on her body, helping to cool her.

It didn't even register that it was still daylight out.

* * *

><p><span>Earlier that morning.<span>

Colin and Dwayne were both pushed forward against their seatbelts as their SUV lurched to a stop. They'd pulled up in front of the town's police station, which now looked like some kind of command post straight out of a movie. There were government agents everywhere, and every one of them had an earpiece of some kind, constantly in contact with each other.

One of the Suits from their vehicle hopped out as soon as it stopped, and made his way to Colin's door. He pulled it open swiftly, then motioned for both of them to exit. "The quicker we get this done, the quicker the both of you return home, got it?"

They nodded as one, then both filed out of the car. They stood in awe of the proceedings for a moment before both of them were ushered into the building flanked by multiple Suits. Dwayne was the first to speak as they made for the Police Station door. "Who are you guys?"

One of the Suits glanced to the side. "This is a CIA and FBI joint task force. Our little visitor attracted a lot of attention. The nearby military base picked it up when it materialized over the I-90. Some kind of energy reading on the radar."

Dwayne blinked. He hadn't exactly expected information. Surprised and somewhat mollified, he remained silent as the two of them were lead to their seats. There was activity all around them. Everyone was presenting some kind of information to everyone else, and the whole place felt alive and excited. Maybe they were just relieved that First Contact hadn't been with someone who immediately started shooting? It sure seemed like it was that way. No bad alien movies today.

Dwayne's attention was drawn to a particularly loud man with a buzz cut talking to a stereotypical scrawny guy in what looked like a lab coat. They were discussing rather animatedly and heading straight this way.

"- mean to tell me that this thing is real, Talbot?"

"Yes, General Taggart."

Dwayne blinked a bit. Now the buzz-cut guy's green suit made sense. He'd thought he was dressed like the Riddler at first.

"Alright. I'm listening."

"Of course, Sir. You see, we got a DNA sample off the blood we collected from the vehicle we confiscated."

The General blinked and spit coffee. "You –what-."

"Yes, sir. And when we analyzed it it came back with a reading that the machine couldn't actually understand. You see, where Humans have 23 pairs of Chromosomes, this sample had 34."

"-WHAT-."

"Yes, sir. And the machine found traces of some kind of energy in the blood itself. It faded before we could collect a reading off of it, but we know for sure it was some kind of radiation we've never actually encountered before sir."

"-WHAT!-" The General grabbed Talbot by his arm, stopping him right in front of Dwayne and Colin. "You mean to tell me that not only is this thing certifiably alien, we've collected a blood sample, found out that it is nothing like us, and it's blood is radioactive."

"That's the idea, sir."

General Taggart put a hand to his face and quickly ran it down, trying to coax his thoughts. "Very well. Any hostile activity?"

"None at all, sir. In fact, we've identified the object that was on her back. It was a sword, sir."

"Wait. You're telling me that it's a -she-. _And _she was carrying weaponry?"

Talbot blushed slightly. "I've studied the footage quite extensively General. Her facial structure is reminiscent of both feline and human female facial anatomy. We've enhanced the video we pulled from YouTube as much as possible, which has allowed for us to do quite the study of her and her armor."

"No one mentioned anything about armor."

"It's how she survived the car crash, General."

"What."

* * *

><p>Sly sat up after what felt like ages. The sun was quickly going down over the tree tops, but she felt somewhat better than she had before. She put her hand to her head, brushing away a bit of water from the rain. Her hair was a tangled and dirty mess, but at least she wasn't cooking alive in her skin anymore. Her hand against her head told her two things. She was no longer as hot as she was before. And that she was covered in dirt. And very very wet.<p>

She pushed herself to her feet, crouching for a moment as a fit of dizziness washed over her. As it passed she crunched back over the crushed cans, dimly noting that rain plus crushed cans equals lack of dirt coverage and a less-than-effective trap. She pushed her way back inside, dripping water and dirt across her newly-cleaned floors. She didn't quite care.

She lurched her way to the bathroom where she'd located a shower the night before. Without bothering to strip she pulled the curtain open and fell rather than climbed into the tub. She fumbled for a moment before she found the control-things, quickly turning on the cold water.

She knew which one was the cold water because she turned on the hot water the night before and burnt her arm. Being a smart Night Elf, Sly quickly realized the correlation between the red box and the blue squiggly and hot and cold water. Deciding to momentarily drown herself in cold water and the misery of the flu, she simply remained sprawled in the bottom of the shower, clothes, armor, dirt, and all.

* * *

><p>"Eh, wot?"<p>

Jinx put his fingers against the bridge of his nose and squeezed, his eyes shut against the building headache. He'd pulled in every favor anyone had ever owed him ever, and a few that people didn't know they actually owed him to boot to get the Dwarven Engineering guild down to his lab. What he hadn't realized was that "Dwarven Engineering guild" apparently meant "Dwarven get-falling-down-drunk-and-blow-shit-up guild". Most of them didn't know anything about Engineering other than "Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey", and Jinx was doing more teaching than building at the moment.

"You don't know what a trans-dimensional discombobulator is?"

"Naep."

Jinx let out a loud sigh. "Fit the glowing blue thing into the circle marked with the blue circle. Just like the glowing blue thing is." He marked both items with blue circles from the marker he was carrying.

The Dwarf looked from one to the other and back again before it hit him. "Oh! Aye!" He then went about shoving the rather delicate piece of machinery into it's home in a somewhat rough manner.

Jinx sighed again, sitting in his chair in front of his desk. Which was, for the moment, covered in the plans for rebuilding the machine that had sent Slywyn wherever she was now. The only difference between the two was that this one was equipped with a wormhole generator. That was fully functional. And grounded.

* * *

><p>Dwayne looked at Colin, then back to the General. He looked back to Colin and put a finger to his lips. He wanted to hear everything that these two had to say.<p>

The General was still reeling from finding out that the alien had been struck by a car- and survived.

"Yes, sir. I am aware of the irony. That an alien would 'land', in a manner of speaking, and be immediately hit by a car."

General Taggart recovered enough to speak. "Alright. So tell me, Talbot. She's carrying weaponry. Was struck by a car. _And_ surrounded by citizens with cell phones that drove her off. That's what you're telling me right now?"

"Indeed I am sir."

Taggart looked thoughtful for a moment. "I would assume that this alien is not hostile. She had ample time and opportunity to go on a spree, and did not."

"We had been leaning that way, sir", Talbot countered, "But at the same time, it could have been some kind of disorientation from her method of entry. You see, according to eyewitness accounts she literally fell out of the sky and landed on her face. From an entry point about eleven feet off the ground."

"I see. Are you aware that the CIA already has hunter/killer teams out in the wilderness around town searching for this ali-" Talbot gave the General a look, and he sighed. "For _her._ Christ, Talbot, how many times did you watch the video."

Talbot's face turned a slightly darker shade of pink. "Enough."

The General shot another look before reaching for a radio on his belt. "General Taggart to H/K Leader, over."

The radio crackled with static for a moment before a quiet voice answered. "This is H/K leader, over."

"Have all teams switch to non-lethal weaponry unless attacked. This alien has shown no hostile tendencies and I will not start a war over a misunderstanding, you hear me? Over."

"Copy, General. Will inform teams. H/K Leader, over and out."

The General put his radio back in it's holster on his belt, then his eyes went to Dwayne and Colin, noticing them for the first time. He drew back in surprise. "And who the fuck are these two jokers?"

Dwayne recoiled slightly, and Colin's mouth turned up into the tiniest of smirks. Talbot spoke for them. "From what I understand these two have some information on her, Sir."

General Taggart raised an eyebrow and motioned for Dwayne and Colin to come with him. "Very well. Follow me, boys."

Dwayne looked at Colin before standing and beginning to walk after the General, who was already moving down the hall. Colin followed momentarily, keeping in step behind Dwayne.


	10. Exposition

Both men followed General Taggart and Talbot down the hall, passing many Suits and Police Officers along the way. Dwayne's head was on a swivel, taking in and listening to as much as he could all around him. Everyone was excited, relieved, and curious in seemingly equal measure. They all wanted to learn more, hear more. Dwayne didn't realize they'd stopped and almost ran into Talbot.

General Taggart held open a door to one of the Police Station's interrogation rooms, motioning both of them in. "In here boys. We've got a few questions for you."

Dwayne nodded and stepped into the room, Colin following him quickly. There were four chairs around the table, two on one side and two on the other. Taggart walked around the back side of the table, farthest from the wall, and pulled out the two chairs. He and Talbot sat in those, letting Dwayne and Colin sit in the ones closer to the door. They hadn't locked it.

Taggart began while Talbot pulled a notepad and a pen out of a pocket on his coat. "As you can see, boys, you're not under arrest. You're not in trouble. You're free to go whenever you wish. But we'd like you to answer a few questions for us."

"So why'd you take us out of our houses like that?" Colin frowned, leaning an arm on the table.

Taggart made a disgruntled face, moving a hand up to rub at the back of his head. "That was a misunderstanding. I gave the order to the FBI to bring you in for questioning, and they passed it along to the CIA. Apparently someone in the old guard led your pickup. Some Cold War dinosaur."

Colin and Dwayne both blinked. Taggart looked to be in his early fifties. At least. He had a soldier's face, lined and weathered, like he'd spent far too long in the desert. Which, if he'd had anything to do with the three Middle Eastern Wars, he likely had. His hair was graying and thinning on the top, making him look older than he likely was. Dwayne reconsidered. Maybe he was in his late forties.

Talbot spoke next. "At any rate, it was a misunderstanding. They were supposed to request you to come with them. As you can see, things were muddled somewhat. And we apologize."

Dwayne gave a nod, putting a hand out to gesture on the table as he spoke. "I don't really mind. I'd like to share whatever information I can. I don't really know how much help it's going to be to you, though."

"What makes you say that, son?" Taggart raised an eyebrow.

"Well, it's from a video game." Colin looked to his side at Dwayne and continued speaking. "Dwayne was a big fan of it, but the company went bankrupt a few years ago. Their main lore developer kept talking about how he was 'waiting for a vision' to continue working on the game. They only ever came out with Warcraft 3."

Taggart's face went blank, then he looked at Talbot. "You mean to tell me that our only source of Intel on her is a video game?"

Talbot flushed again, reaching up to adjust his glasses. They were frameless, and the arms holding them to his head disappeared into his hair, cut fairly short with a dark brown color. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. "Well, sir. I've done some research based on the information that Steggart brought back from his interview of Mr. Young here." Talbot gestured to Dwayne. "And what we know so far checks out with the physical description I was able to find."

Taggart's face took on a curious slant before he continued. "… Very well. Tell us what you know, son. Start from the beginning."

Dwayne nodded.

* * *

><p>Slywyn awoke, though she wasn't immediately able to get her eyes open. They seemed crusted shut, and she had to rub them several times with the back of her hand to get them open. She didn't immediately know what time it was, but her internal clock was telling her that it was early evening. Likely some time before the sun was going to go down. She didn't know how long she'd been asleep, but the shower had been on the entire time.<p>

She felt …old. Her whole body ached, her muscles screaming at her every time she moved. She barely had the strength to turn the water off. She was shivering, having been lying in the cold water for who knows how long. She flopped out of the tub, lying on the linoleum floor for a moment while she tried to catch her breath. She still felt like she was burning up, hotter than she knew how to deal with. She could somehow sense that unless something happened, and soon, she might not make it much longer.

She felt her stomach churn, then felt bile rising in the back of her throat. She managed to choke it down, but it left her throat feeling burned and raw. She crawled to the door of the bathroom, it in itself almost proving to be an insurmountable obstacle. She hoisted herself up by the door knob, then used the counter next to the door to bring herself to her feet, barely able to stand. She pushed the door open, then flopped into the wall opposite the bathroom. She leaned against it for support as she slowly made her way to the kitchen, the packet of crackers still abandoned on the floor.

Crossing the area with the couch in it was the hardest part, and she almost fell twice as she lurched across it. She felt like death, and she could immediately tell it wasn't something she ever wanted to feel again. She finally made it into the kitchen, leaning against the u-shaped kitchen counter.

She looked up, searching through the cabinets hanging from the ceiling. She found what she wanted soon enough, a cup to hold some water. She turned the faucet in the sink on, then quickly filled the cup. She drained it in one gulp, only realizing just how thirsty she was when she put the cup to her lips. She did this twice more before the shivering began again, so violently that she almost flung the cup across the room.

Sly gripped herself tightly, wrapping her arms around herself in a hug as she tried to pull herself together. She spoke for the first time since her landing, trying to reassure herself in her native Darnassian. "Come on, Slywyn… You've made it through worse than this." It didn't really work, but hearing her native tongue comforted her somewhat.

She remembered the blanket on the bed in the bedroom just down the hall, and slowly began working her way toward it. Hopefully it would help a little.

Once she reached the bedroom, she was at a loss for what to do. She needed some kind of plan. She couldn't do anything sick like this. Scouting was out of the question. She couldn't try to repair anything with her hands shaking this badly. She looked around the room, seeing what she could learn from another once-over. The can tied to the string was still undisturbed. A good sign. There were books all around the room, but none of them had any writing on the spines that looked even remotely familiar. They may as well have been written in Orcish.

Then her stomach growled. Against all odds, and the nausea, she was hungry. She didn't remember the last time she'd eaten. Then she remembered the crackers, and decided they didn't count. She pushed off of the bed, beginning the long journey to the kitchen again. As she worked her way there, she caught a glimpse of the strange video screen in the room with the couch again.

An idea began forming in her head. She knew nothing about the world she was inhabiting. Maybe trying to fix that could lend a bit of insight into what her next move should be. Until she found a power source for her Wormhole Generator, she was stuck here. May as well play explorer while she could.

She grabbed the crackers and a larger glass of water, then made her way to the living room. Her armored leggings felt heavy, and were needlessly weighing her down, so she took them off, adding them to the armor that was littering the floor from where she'd taken it off in her 'dash' outside the day before.

Sly plopped herself down on the floor in front of the video screen, then began searching for a means to turn it on. There were six buttons in the bottom of the thing. Four of them had up and down arrows, something she didn't immediately associate with power, so she ignored them. The last two buttons were on either end of the row of buttons. One had a red circle with a line through it vertically. On a guess, she pressed it.

Nothing happened at first, then the thing began to hum. The screen suddenly flicked to life, flashing a bright white light that momentarily blinded her. It was unexpected, but vaguely reminded her of something similar that the Gnomish screens would do if they had been off for a while.

Slowly, video began to play, and sound began to emanate from the thing. Sly blinked a few times, watching it. The screen was filled with a Human sitting at a table, reading what looked like a larger version of a news bulletin that she'd seen in Stormwind a few times. She tilted her head to the side, then popped a few crackers into her mouth and took a glass of water.

Sick, shivering, and alone, Slywyn began to learn more about this place that she was stuck in.

* * *

><p>"About eighteen years ago, a company named Blizzard released a game called 'Warcraft: Orcs and Humans'.", Dwayne began.<p>

Talbot interrupted. "Wait. I've heard of that game. Didn't it win a lot of awards and things?"

Dwayne nodded. "It did. It was one of the original RTS games. It was hugely successful, then was followed by two more games; Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, and Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos."

Taggart smirked a bit. "You really are a nerd, son. But I'm interested."

Dwayne took a breath, then continued. "The one we're interested in at the moment is the third game, Warcraft 3. That's the game that the Night Elves were introduced in. The woman I saw in the video on YouTube and the cell phone photos matches the physical description from the video game almost perfectly. If I had to take a guess, that's what I'd say she was."

Taggart and Talbot both looked incredulous, though Talbot was the first to speak. He looked to Taggart. "Sir, when I did my research, I concluded much the same result. The physical description is eerily accurate, right down to her projected height of near seven feet." Talbot looked back to Dwayne. "Sorry. Continue."

"Well… I don't exactly know what else to say. You saw how fast she can run. Her eyes glow. They have magic in their blood. A-"

Taggart shot out a hand. "Wait a second. Magic? You didn't mention anything about magic. And her eyes do what?"

Dwayne gathered his thoughts for a moment. "Well, in the story, the Night Elves used to live around this big well of arcane magical energy tens of thousands of years ago. They were mutated by it, and it became a part of them and their everyday life. Their eyes took on a glow, which could change depending on what kind of magic they could use. I don't really want to go into detail about it, but that's what causes it. Her eyes glow because of the magic within her. And her blood would show traces of it. Night Elves are inherently magical creatures."

Taggart glanced at Talbot. "I want you to take your readings of the energy you found in her blood, and study them. Devote an entire team to it. Find out everything you can."

"But, sir, we only got a very minor read-"

"Look. Talbot. I don't care. I want you to find out everything you can about this. Study what you have. That's an order." He looked back to Dwayne. "But not yet, I want to hear what else he has to say."

Dwayne gulped. "What else do you want to know?"

"What happened to the company? Bizzaro or whatever." Taggart waved a hand dismissively.

"Oh. Blizzard. They went under a few years after Warcraft 3 was released. Their main lore developer said that he got the idea from the story from a vision he received in a dream. He kept waiting and waiting for another, and eventually the fans lost interest. They moved on. Everyone thought he was nuts, but now that there's a living, breathing Night Elf on Earth, I want to say he might not be so crazy after all."

Taggart looked at Talbot. "Do you think we could bring him in for questioning?"

Colin interjected. "You can't. He died in a car crash a year ago. Sped right into a pole. And, good luck finding anyone else who knows anything about it. They all used to say he made the whole thing up. None of them believed him about the visions."

Taggart frowned. "Shame."

Talbot put his chin in his hand, thinking. After a moment, he spoke. "The only real course of action I can see us taking now is finding her. Without her, other than the blood and the crashed car, we don't have any tangible proof of her existence. The public at large are going to realize that something really did land here soon. I give us another day or two before things start getting out of control. If we don't find her before then we might have a panic on our hands."

Taggart looked to Colin and Dwayne. "Well, boys. Seeing as you're our resident experts on this thing, as much as I don't believe a damn word of it, we could use your help. What do you say?"

Dwayne looked at Colin. "Uh…"

"You'll be paid."

Colin put his hand over Dwayne's mouth quickly, stifling any objections. "We'll do it."


	11. Bigass Sword

AN: I know it's been a while since I updated, so an explanation is in order. I ended up losing my computer for over a month, so I couldn't update anything. And my update schedule can get pretty sporadic to begin with. I write when I feel like writing, and when I don't feel like writing, I don't. A forced story is worse than no story. I'm not going to turn out something that I'm not happy with just to give people something to read. So, my writing may not be the best, but I'll always give you the best quality I feel I can.

Which is just me making excuses for not posting in the 2+ weeks I've had my computer back since it got taken away. Skyrim is _really really fun._

* * *

><p>Taggart walked down the corridor with Talbot toward the prefabricated laboratory in the rear of the building, which had once been the gym for the police officers. He stood nearly a head taller than the scientist, with his close-cropped graying hair. Three stars adorned his green Army dress uniform, and a few medals were positioned on his chest opposite his nametag and a badge with a bar code on it. He slid that badge through a reader on the outside of the plastic wall of the lab, and stepped inside with Talbot.<p>

Once they were out of hearing range of the two young men, Talbot finally spoke. "Do you really believe their story, sir?"

Taggart turned to watch the two as they seemingly argued outside the room the two had been questioned in. "Honestly? I don't believe a word of it. But I've heard stranger stories from more reliable stories. So until we receive proof otherwise, treat what they've told us as fact. It's all we have to go on." The General stuck his hands in the pockets of his pants, then pulled out an unlit pipe. He didn't put anything inside it, just holding it in his teeth.

Talbot took his glasses off, wiping them clean on his labcoat. "What about paying them? Are we really going to?"

Taggart nodded. "We can keep them on in an advisory position as long as we might need to ask them questions. Pay them a stipend for lost income and whatever travel and food expenses they might incur. They seem willing enough, and nothing in their background checks came up as red flags. Just a couple of teenagers with a crazy, but possibly true story for now.

Talbot watched the two as the one named Colin smacked Dwayne on the shoulder to emphasize something he said. "What if they turn out to be right? What if she really is some kind of super-powered magical alien? I read whatever I could about that race he spoke about." Talbot nodded toward Dwayne. "If any of it's true, she's more than a match for our soldiers. And our preliminary analysis of the metal shavings we managed to collect from the car is coming back a completely unknown metal that would far surpass anything we can create in both strength and lightness."

Taggart's eyebrows went up. "Speaking of samples, I want to know everything you do about anything we can collect from her." He frowned. "If it's even a her."

Talbot nodded and motioned toward one of the tables. "I arranged all our findings so far here." He moved toward the table, and Taggart moved to the other side, turning a few papers around so he could read them. "This is what we've managed to gather so far. The energy in her blood is a previously unrecorded radioactive signature that we only got the faintest of glimpses of before it faded. And that's all we know about it. We don't know if it's dangerous, the wavelength, or even the strength. It was there, and then it was gone. It would seem that whatever it is comes from her body, and fades quickly when removed. I suppose If we got a fresher sample we could learn more about it, but that would require finding her first."

Taggart nodded, then began reading through the report on the metal. "So we have nothing like this on Earth?"

"No sir. It comes off a bit like Titanium, but it's molecular structure is very different. The samples we collected had an incredibly high tensile strength, and needed almost twice the heat that Titanium does to melt down. And she's wearing a suit of it that we believe is anywhere from a quarter of an inch to half an inch thick."

Taggart looked up, surprised. "That's thicker than we have on some tanks!"

Talbot nodded. "I'm aware, sir. But as you can see… Where is it…" He fumbled around in his pockets for a moment before he pulled out a remote, and pointed it at one of the computers on a table nearby. It beeped on, and then an image was projected on a screen hanging from the side of the lab. "As you can see, judging from the images we collected, and gauging the width of her armor based on her height and the Humans around her, it seems to be half an inch thick on her shoulderplates, and as thin as a quarter of an inch on her hands, where the gloves give way to leather."

Taggart stood in a position known as "parade rest" as he listened to Talbot. "There seems to be some sort of paint on it, as the metal we recovered was silver, but what she's wearing is blue. You can even see some scratch marks on the paint where the armor shows through. These shine, meaning either the metal oxidizes, or it has some kind of coating on it to provide it with a matte finish. Presumably for stealth of some kind."

"Or she just doesn't want to blind people around her." Taggart looked at Talbot and raised his eyebrow.

"Er… yes, sir. But from the information I gathered from the website, the Night Elves lived in forests and deep wilderness. They were mostly nocturnal, excellent archers, and guerilla fighters."

The General frowned and looked over the image. "That probably explains how she escaped from police and still hasn't been found, then. We couldn't even pick up a trail after the first hundred feet, even with K-9 units."

Talbot nodded. "We were also able to tell from the video," Talbot hit a button on the remote, and the image began to play, revealing that it was the cell phone video recovered from YouTube, and Taggart held out his hand.

"Wait. You're telling me that this video is the one we recovered from YouTube?" Talbot nodded, and Taggart put a hand on his chin. "Damn. I didn't know cell phone cameras were that good."

The scientist smiled. "Well, we did have a video tech touch it up quite a bit. Sharpened it and brought the colors out more. Anything to learn more about the subject. As you ordered, sir."

Taggart nodded. "Right."

Talbot let the video play until the camera lost the Elf in the treeline, then rewound the footage and let it loop. "She ran at a top speed of very nearly fourty miles an hour. Which is nearly twice the fastest speed that a Human can achieve. And she did that in armor that we guess might weigh as much as sixty pounds."

Taggart looked to Talbot, his expression unbelieving. "There's no way."

"The video doesn't lie, sir." Talbot froze the video on an image of the elf's face, her large dark scar dominating it. "Whatever she is, video game, elf, or something else, she's definitely not anything we've ever dealt with before, sir."

Taggart frowned and nodded. "That is probably the most factual thing you've told me all day." He turned toward the image, staring at the face captured in it, and brought his hand to his chin to think.

* * *

><p>Dwayne stepped out of the room after the General and scientist walked off toward the back of the station, Colin following right after him. "I really don't think this is a good idea, dude." He turned to his friend.<p>

Colin shot him a look. "They're going to _pay us_, man. And being here when we very well might make First Contact is totally worth missing school for. I mean, you're failing anyway so what do you have to lose?"

Dwayne frowned and watched the two older men disappear through a doorway, then leaned up against the wall. "But something about those two doesn't sit well with me, man. They're probably going to capture her and do all kinds of crazy experiments on her and shit. She'll die. Or something."

Colin stepped out into the hallway in front of Dwayne, then turned to face him. He poked him in the shoulder. "Why do you even care? It's not like you're her friend or something. Just take the money, tell them whatever they want to know, and shut up. She's some elf or something from another world."

Dwayne just shrugged his shoulders. "It wouldn't be right, man. I still think we shouldn't be a part of this."

Colin slapped Dwayne on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "Oh, if you're going to whine about how they're going to treat her, you go find her! And I'll stay here and get paid to do nothing."

Dwayne smirked a bit then, making Colin lean back a bit. "If I leave, then what use are you? I'm the one that knows all the information."

Colin huffed, thinking. "Then… I'll go read the wiki! Like you did."

"That scientist already did that. You'd be nothing to them. You didn't even really play WC3, man." He said 'WC3' as "Wee-see-three". "You don't know any of the story, or what they can do, or anything."

Colin finally seemed defeated. "Fine. But at least give it a few days! See if they come up with anything. If they treat her like shit, we can protest or something. But at least take the money for a few days."

"Fine. But the first time they start shooting at people, or someone gets stabbed by that bigass sword she was carrying, I'm fucking _gone._"

Colin laughed. "Fair enough, man."


	12. Bad Time

Two days had passed since Colin and Dwayne had agreed to help find her, and Slywyn had mostly recovered from the illness that had gripped her. She didn't know it, of course, but she'd survived a bout with the flu. Barely, it seemed.

Her whole body still ached, but it was dull rather than acute, and didn't affect her at all unless she really pushed herself. As she'd done on a run through the woods this morning. She'd woken up, checked the can next to her bed to see if anyone had approached the house, checked the 'traps' near the front and back door, and found nothing.

Spirits higher than they'd been in days, she felt as if she'd practically been overflowing with energy just begging to be used. She checked the direction of the sun's flow during the day, measured the length of a day, and using the timepiece on her gauntlet, had compared it to the length of day she was used to the day previously. Strangely, they seemed to be nearly the same. The day here was at most an hour shorter than what she was used to.

Using that, she'd assigned directions based on the facing of moss on a rock nearby, and had drawn a rather rudimentary map of the area. Just streets she remembered and a ballpark estimate of where the large road with all the vehicles had been.

Now, it was nearing noon, and she was making her way back through the woods. She'd worn her armor in an attempt to really push herself, and she was glad she did. Something wrong was tickling at the back of her neck, and she just couldn't place what it was.

She knew better than to discount her intuition. It had saved her life before. But she just couldn't place what was wrong. She was getting the feeling like someone was watching her, but even though she'd scanned the woods around her several times as she walked; she just hadn't been able to find anything.

Then, her alarm level rocketed up several notches as she realized just what was bothering her. The woods were silent. Just a few minutes ago they had been full of noise. Some wildlife noise, wind, rustling, things like that. Now there was nothing. The air was still.

She raised her head a bit, sniffing. And there was an odd smell on the wind. It reminded her of... leather, and plastics that the Gnomes had begun using in some things. She crouched, growing even more alarmed. She began creeping through the underbrush, still smelling.

She could detect a few other things, but her nose just wasn't sensitive enough to pick up anything other than faint hints. She couldn't get a direction or distance based off of it. She'd give anything for a Worgen.

Then, she froze. Her ear twitched. She'd heard something, but it was so faint that she couldn't remember what it was. Then she heard it again. A quiet, faint, rasping sliding sound, followed by a click. It was metallic. Definitely not natural. She drew the sword from her back, going into a fighting stance.

Then the woods around her practically exploded.

* * *

><p>Taggart and Talbot were examining maps in the Police Station, bent over one of the woods, with several large red rings drawn upon it. Taggart pointed at several of them, apparently explaining them to Talbot.<p>

"This one, around the edge," He motioned toward the largest ring, with the thickest outline, "Is the distance she could have covered within two days of hitting ground if she was able to sprint as fast as she did for four hours a day. As you can see it covers a gigantic area."

Talbot nodded, pointing to a much smaller ring. This one was covered in hatch marks. "This is the area you searched initially?"

Taggart nodded, placing a meaty finger in the very center of that ring. "And what we keep searching daily. This is the area she would have covered if she went to ground with her injuries almost immediately."

Talbot frowned, looking over the map. "This is a huge area. With several towns within it." He gestured to one of the smaller towns. Which happened to be the one that they were based in. "Have we searched the town?"

Taggart nodded, though he looked disappointed. Or frustrated. "We have. Several times. But we didn't think to do it until the second night, when we realized she'd escaped our initial net. She could have gone to ground anywhere. We just have no id-" Taggart stopped suddenly, the radio on his belt crackling to life.

"This is HK-2. We have movement just north of Newburg."

Both Taggart and Talbot stared at it. It had been days since they heard anything at all from one of the teams. They'd been instructed only to call Taggart if they had a hit they suspected to be the alien. That one of them called now could only mean something big. Especially when they were just outside of the city.

Taggart quickly unhooked the radio and spoke quietly. The team leaders all wore earpieces, but if what information they did have held true, as unlikely as it seemed, the alien's hearing could be incredibly acute. "You watch, and you report. You do not engage. I repeat. Do not engage."

The radio remained quiet, and both of them just continued to stare at it. Talbot was actually sweating, his face glistening with sweat born of extreme excitement. The tension in the room simply grew, and when the radio crackled again, Talbot actually jumped he'd been so tense.

"This is her. Repeat. We found her. Alien subject, roughly seven feet tall, long pointed ears. Wearing metallic armor of unknown origin. Carrying large sword roughly five feet long. First spotted running at a speed we were unable to match. Tracked nearly a mile before spotted returning along the same path taken. She seems to be heading back- Hold."

Both of them continued to stare at the radio. Several other scientists, agents, and other personnel had noticed them, both within and without the little plastic command room. They stared openly, either directly at them or through plastic. Every single person in the room had their eyes locked directly on the radio.

It crackled again, and the voice coming from it sounded like it was on a hair trigger. "She's stopped. Subject looks alarmed. Sniffing the air. Crouching. She's drawn a-" And then there was gunfire from the radio.

Talbot's face paled considerably, and he looked up at Taggart. "Oh no."

* * *

><p>As Sly pulled her great sword free, a flash of light from almost directly in front of her startled her. It was followed immediately by an incredibly loud crack, which was in turn followed by several things at once. For one, she felt almost as if she'd been punched in the chest by a Titan, being thrown off of her feet and into the brush. She felt pain, though it was dulled. Something had struck one of the thickest parts of her armor.<p>

Secondly, she heard someone... no, scratch that, several someones yelling loudly in that language she didn't understand. Someone was very upset. And she heard more of those clicky-raspy sounds she couldn't place.

She lay there on the ground, catching her breath from where it had been knocked entirely out of her from the hammerblow to her chest. Her armor felt indented, though not badly. She was feeling very, very angry, but didn't have the breath to do anything about it.

At the same time, perhaps this was some kind of warning? It had hurt, yes. But she wasn't dead. Didn't seem to be injured. Caution tempered her anger. She had the feeling that these Humans around her had the capability to kill her if they really wanted, so she waited. She seethed, yes. They had shot at her. They had dented her armor. But she wasn't injured, and they hadn't done anything else to her just yet.

Her ears twitched, and she heard just one voice. Someone was speaking. Very quietly. He had a curt, businesslike tone to his voice. She'd heard that same tone from a Goblin describing a business deal to her once.

Then, someone got close to her. She felt more than she heard it. The ground nearby vibrated softly, the loam of the woods bending and denting as a foot settled into it. She took that as her opportunity, sweeping the flat of her blade across the ground as fast as she could. At the same time as it would knock whoever was closest to her off of their feet, she was hoping it would throw dirt and plants at whoever was near them. Maybe it would disorient them. Maybe even get them to avert their eyes for a moment.

At the same time as she swept her arm, her other hand went to her shoulder, pushing against the ground. She arched her back, throwing her legs into the air, pulled tight against herself. She pushed with her arm at the same time as she seemed to make a jumping movement. The two forces combined were enough to throw her onto her feet, low to the ground and in a crouch.

It took less than half a second to complete both movements, and the Humans around her were only just beginning to react. Dimly in the back of her mind she realized they were much, much slower than the Humans she remembered. They weren't likely raised in a world like she was. And the fact that she was an Elf didn't hurt.

She let out as loud of a feral growl as she could manage, aiming to startle. As she did, she brought her sword arm in a flat arc across her chest. The flat side of her blade cracked against one Human, and she felt something in his chest give. She planted her feet for balance and spun her sword back the other way, just as hard and fast. She'd noticed this particular Human raising what looked like a rifle. She instinctively knew she couldn't let this happen.

The sword connected first with the weapon, which shattered under the blow. Several screws went flying as the thing came apart under the sheer force of the blow, metal bits flying everywhere. Then her sword's blade swung into his shoulder, and she felt rather than heard the crack that accompanied it. He wouldn't be using that arm any time soon.

Then, she felt another punch hit her in the side. This time accompanied by pain. A lot of pain. Something hot, sharp, and very fast rocketed into her middle, and Sly's back went straight. The pain of it almost whited out her vision, but she willed herself to stay conscious. She turned again, gritting her teeth against the tearing she felt in her middle. The gloves were off. She was in a lot of pain.

She led with the edge of her blade... but the other Humans were out of range. She was facing several more rifles. There were more of them than she'd realized at first, and there was nothing more she could do. She dropped the blade in her hands, letting it dangle from the weapon chain connecting the hilt to her hand.

Then she dropped to her knees, her insides feeling like they were on fire. She instantly knew something vital had been hit. Sly coughed once, vaguely registering the taste of blood in her mouth as her world went black and she slumped to the ground.

* * *

><p>Back in the control room, everyone had gone as still and quiet as statues as noises rang out over the radio. There was a gunshot, the sound of metal clanging violently on metal, and then silence. Then there were the sounds of fighting. In particular, several almost feline growls and screams had shocked even Taggart, followed by a loud shattering sound. Then there was another gunshot, and everything went quiet.<p>

When HK-2's voice came back over the radio, they knew more than ever things had gone terribly wrong. The normally cool voice was shaky with what seemed like fear, and actually sounded incredibly worried.

"Alien subject has been subdued. Several men need immediate medical attention. She's been shot."

Taggart looked at Talbot, and the scientist spoke. "This is bad. Very bad."


	13. Waiting

Taggart and Talbot paced just inside the plastic-coated headquarters of their operation, Taggart biting his knuckles with his head practically buried in his chest, and Talbot constantly cleaning and re-cleaning his glasses every few seconds. Taggart kept glancing at the projector screen, where the computer's images were being displayed on the backdrop.

The HK leader had had a video camera mounted on his helmet, which documented everything from the first sighting where the elf had gone speeding by at well over twenty miles an hour, to the final moments before she was shot in the side by one of the team members. She'd pulled her sword, though hadn't actively attacked anyone, and a different team member had shot her in the chest, thankfully stopped by the thick armor she wore. Taggart had been surprised by this, as the shot hadn't even seemed to damage the armor, and the elf hadn't seemed very phased by taking a direct high powered rifle shot to the chestplate.

They'd downloaded the video directly from his helmet to the computer using a wireless connection, and they'd been studying it while waiting for the ambulances to arrive. They'd set up a makeshift field hospital in the area anyway, as several men had had accidents with equipment or other things, and the area's hospital wasn't very well equipped.

The altercation had happened at an area about half an hour's drive from here, and they had sent several ambulances to pick up both the wounded men, and the alien. Taggart was more nervous because the operation had gone to complete shit under his watch, while Talbot was worried he wouldn't have a chance to speak to the Alien at any length before she died. If she could even understand him! Talbot growled with frustration, causing Taggart to glance at him with a raised eyebrow.

Both of them almost jumped when someone banged on the plastic door to the room, and Taggart was surprised to see Dwayne banging on the glass with his fist, yelling something Taggart couldn't make out. He gestured to one of the Military Police in the lab, waving his arm. "Let that idiot in before he breaks something."

The MP nodded curtly and snapped a quick salute before moving to the door. He barely had time to unlock it before Dwayne pushed through, pointing an angry finger at the General. "You got her shot, you asshole!" He growled and tried to jump at Taggart, who was thoroughly surprised. Dwayne was normally docile, and he hadn't expected anything like this from the younger male. Two MPs wrapped him up with their arms, and Dwayne struggled against them.

"What? You think I _wanted _this to happen? Are you some kind of idiot?" Dwayne cooled a bit as Taggart spoke, barely keeping his voice from becoming a yell. "The first alien we've had contact with in history, and she gets shot. How do you expect that makes me look, huh?" He glared at Dwayne, who finally pursed his lips and nodded. "Why do you care so much anyway, son?"

"Because I-" They both turned their heads to look down the hallway as several people began running down it toward the doors.

"They must be here!" Taggart pushed Dwayne out of the way and took off down the hallway toward the front door. He almost knocked several people to the side as he ran, pushing through the swinging doors out the front of the station where an ambulance and two EMT Humvees were parked. He skidded to a halt as the military medics unloaded the two wounded soldiers first, rushing them inside the building.

One of them didn't look very serious. He came out of the first medical humvee on a stretcher, his boot removed and a pack of ice around his ankle to keep swelling down. The second soldier was removed from the ambulance, with a civilian paramedic at his side. His right arm was bent at an odd angle from his shoulder, and he was writhing in pain. They quickly carried him into the building and out of sight.

A crowd was gathering around the last medical humvee, emblazoned with a red cross on a white field to denote that it was a purely medical vehicle. Guards were trying to keep soldiers and a few curious civilians who had gathered around out of the way, as the operation, as per Taggart's orders, hadn't released very much information about what was happening, and why they were there. One of the MPs gave an order, and the soldiers backed away slowly. The civilians still hung around and tried to get a good look.

As the medics pulled the stretcher bearing the alien out of the humvee, Taggart was mortified to see that it was covered in a sheet. Splotches of purple blood covered the sheet, and the form underneath was still. Taggart rushed over, pushing one of the MPs out of the way, and stopped one of the medics. "What happened!" His face was pale, his actions more hurried than he would have liked.

The medic spoke quietly, trying to reassure him. "She's stable for the moment. We just knocked her out with an injection and covered her with the sheet to keep eyes off until we see her first, Sir." The medic nodded toward the door. "She's bleeding internally and we need to get her inside. Sir."

Taggart nodded, only just now realizing that he was blocking the way to the door. He stepped to the side and let them pass, only to follow them moments later. They quickly led the way through the cleared hallway, having had it emptied by the soldiers on gurneys passing through moments before.

Taggart kept pace with the medic as they wheeled the alien on into their command center, then around to the side where the hospital area had been set up. The other two soldiers had already been taken into medical bays and curtained off. All Taggart could hear from them was the quiet groans of pain from the soldier with the shattered arm that had been hit by her sword.

Taggart considered him lucky, if she had chosen to, she could have removed the arm rather than just break it. He was still curious why, even when being shot, she had chosen not to react lethally. She could have potentially killed or seriously wounded multiple members of the HK team. He supposed that he'd have to try to ask her. If she survived, and if they could find some way to speak to her, he mused.

The medic wheeled the stretcher with the elf atop it into the largest of the medical bays, reserved for actual surgery and that maintained as much of a clean room environment as they could manage. The medic gently pushed Taggart back. "We need space to work, sir. We'll notify you when the operation is complete."

Taggart nodded, though he noticed that the medic hadn't said 'when the operation was successful', choosing to just say 'complete' instead. That really didn't bode well for her, Taggart thought. He began pacing back and forth outside of the operating area, waiting for something to happen that he could actually take part in. A few moments later one of the medical bays with one of the wounded soldiers pulled it's curtains aside, and a soldier on crutches came hobbling out. "The one with the ankle." Taggart thought.

He made his way over to the soldier, who was hobbling away, and put his hand on his shoulder to stop him. "How is it?" Taggart moved to the soldier's front, stopping him from going anywhere else, and watched his face. The young man's nametag read "JOHNSON" in big block letters. When Johnson looked confused, Taggart gestured to his ankle.

"Oh! It's… well, it hurts sir, but the doc told me that it's just a sprain. She didn't hit me hard enough to break it. Guess she just wanted to knock me over."

Taggart raised his eyebrow at the young man. "You mean the alien? Why say 'she'?"

Johnson's face colored a bit, his hands waving womanly curves into the air in front of him. "Well, if she isn't a she, you're going to have a few confused men in your hands." He shrugged his shoulders. "She's certainly something to look at, sir. We've all seen the pictures from the room you have set up over there." Johnson hooked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing toward the plastic-encased room where Taggart and Talbot had been going over all the evidence.

Taggart gave the man an odd look for a moment then finally nodded, patting him on the shoulder. He moved to walk away, but Johnson called him back after a moment. "Sir!"

Taggart turned, facing Johnson once more, a somewhat confused look on his face. "Yes?"

"I… I'm the one that shot her. In the chest. She raised her weapon, and… well, training took over. Sir." Johnson looked ashamed of himself, but Taggart just nodded, his face setting a little.

"We'll handle that later, son. Go do whatever Doc told you to do."

Johnson nodded, then quickly hobbled away.

Taggart began moving back toward the command tent they'd set him, and a sidelong glance at the door told him that Dwayne was still watching the room, his eyes glued onto the curtains that hid the alien from view. As Taggart opened the plastic door to the tent, he waved at one of the MPs. "Someone bring him in here. We need to talk."

"Who, sir?" Replied one of them.

"Dwayne. And his little friend Colin, wherever he is."

The MP nodded. "Right away, sir."

Talbot was waiting for Taggart when he returned to the tent, a horribly worried expression on his face, glasses clutched between his fingers where the nervous scientist was still cleaning them. "How is she?"

Taggart grabbed a mug and began pouring himself a cup of coffee. The afternoon was beginning to turn into evening, and he had a feeling it was going to be a long night. "Bad. But we've got some of the best army medics here. She's in good hands, Talbot."

Taggart noticed that even he was calling her a she now, but he supposed that was just going to be easier. He glanced up at the feed from the HK lead's helmet, noticing the frame had been frozen on the elf's face, screwed up in the expression of tense combat. He guessed they wouldn't need images and video now that they had the real thing.

If she survived the night.


	14. Awake

Taggart sat on the steps of the police station. Things had been quiet in the last week or so since the female alien had been brought here. She'd survived the surgery alright, but either as some kind of coping mechanism, or possibly through loss of blood, she'd been unconscious. It wasn't clear if she was simply sleeping, or in a true coma, as they knew nothing about her, or her physiology, other than what they were able to document while trying to save her life.

The bullet from the rifle had penetrated her armor, but through luck, or perhaps as a testament to the durability of the metal- which they had stripped from the elf nearly as soon as she'd arrived on the stretcher and was still undergoing tests, the bullet had been deflected up, and barely missed what they were assuming was her stomach. It had penetrated a lung and perforated her diaphragm, meaning that for a day or two they had her on an artificial breather until her body took over.

Talbot said he hadn't seen anything like it. She was healing at a rate that astounded the scientists and doctors brought in to study her, and which had never been matched in Humans. They didn't know how she managed it. As Talbot had so aptly put it: 'It's not like she's out of a comic book, you know, that guy with the claws… But it's definitely inhuman. We've never seen anything like it.'

Taggart frowned and looked down at the small wooden block in his hands. He was sitting off to the side of the training area they'd been set up in, on some stairs that led what he guessed were showers. He'd never gone exploring in the station before now. He'd always been too busy with leading and finding the alien. Now that she was finally here, and wasn't a threat to anyone at the moment, most of the CIA and FBI personnel had left. At least the ones that didn't need to be here for some reason or another.

The HK agent that had fired on the elf was being court-marshaled for disobeying the direct order not to fire, but Taggart had recommended he simply be punished instead of jailed. He assumed that Johnson would probably be knocked down a rank, and removed from the HK teams, but he wasn't sure. And it was out of his hands now, that much was certain. He frowned and tilted the block in his hands from side to side.

He was whittling, something his father had taught him when he was a young boy in the '40s. He was trying to figure out just what it was he was carving, as he hadn't been paying much attention to the strokes he was making. He tilted the carving the other way and finally realized that he had been carving the armor that the elf had been wearing. He'd spent almost an entire day in there with the analysts, looking over the armor, and he had to admit to himself, marveling at it.

The thing was practically a work of art. It was held together by a combination of riveting, welding, and leather straps, but the leather didn't match any known species of animal. And the welding and riveting was on a level that he wasn't sure Humans could even match. Every rivet and weld were absolutely perfect, and his fingers tingled when he touched the cold, blue-hued metal. The analysts had informed him that the same strange radiation that they'd found in her blood was coming from the metal.

However, it didn't seem to be some kind of ambient radiation that was on everything from… wherever she came from, as her pants and shirt were entirely absent the radiation. It was coming from her, from the armor she'd been wearing, and the sword she'd been carrying was practically –glowing- the readings coming off of it were so strong. But otherwise the objects she'd been carrying were practically 'normal', if not for the strange materials that most of it was made of.

The cloth didn't match any known samples, the leather of her boots and leggings didn't match DNA of any known animal species, and the metals were all strange. Except for one sample of Iron they'd collected from a buckle. That had astounded everyone almost as much as the rest of it had. Wherever she was from, they also had iron. And the iron hadn't been anything special. It was just… iron. Good old Fe on the Periodic table.

The spectral analysis of her blood was still in it's preliminary stages, mostly because they'd been afraid of taking more than a little because she'd lost so much during the surgery and from her injuries. The surgery itself had been complicated by the fact that they didn't have any blood or fluids to give her, meaning that whatever she lost, stayed gone.

Talbot had come up with the idea of using a dialysis machine jury-rigged in ways that Taggart didn't understand in order to clean and recycle some of her blood, and the doctors credited him with likely saving her life. Taggart supposed that he'd have to reward him somehow soon.

While he waited for something to happen, Taggart continued to muse. He glanced around the room a few times, noticing several soldiers talking animatedly. He pocketed the small knife he'd been using to carve, swept the wood shavings against the wall with his boot, and placed the small carving in one of his pants pockets. He'd likely simply trash it later, but it might come in handy for now.

He stood then made his way toward the two soldiers talking, starting to be able to make out what they were saying as he neared them. "Did you see the blood!"

"Yeah, I saw it Jones." The second one seemed almost bored, as if they'd discussed this several times. As they likely had. All the personnel involved, other than those already sent away for debriefing, were being contained here. All communication devices, including phones and computers, had been confiscated. They couldn't risk anything about what was going on here getting out.

"It was purple, man! Who has purple blood?" Jones continued. "I mean, it was on the floor, and the tools, and the Docs had it on their scrubs. It's crazy, man." Jones scoffed incredulously. "This is some straight up _Aliens _shit, man, I swear."

Taggart stepped up behind the two soldiers and stepped a little louder than he needed to. Jones turned to stare at Taggart for a moment before he clapped to attention, saluting Taggart. His friend, name "BLYTHE" on his jacket, followed suit quickly after. "Sir!"

Taggart snapped the two a quick salute. "I heard you were talking about our alien friend."

Blythe frowned and glanced toward Jones for a moment before nodding. "He was."

"Well." Taggart began. Talking about the alien wasn't against the rules or anything, but they were trying to discourage too much talk about it, as it was less likely for rumors and things to start that way. They were hoping that by keeping a lid on discussion would keep rumors and speculation to a minimum. Some of the soldiers were spooked enough as it was, and Taggart didn't want things to get out of hand. "How about you two go get some lunch, hm? I'd say that there's probably something you two could be doing other than standing around with your thumbs up your combined asses, no?" He smirked a bit at the end. His soldiers generally knew that he was teasing them, as Taggart preferred not to be a hardass to his command. It tended to grease the wheels, and make subordinates more willing to do what they needed to do, if they didn't feel threatened or cowed by their command.

Both of them saluted again quickly before hurrying off, two hurried 'Yes sir's following them. Taggart smiled and began making his way back toward the tent set up inside the large gymnasium-like space, when he saw Talbot practically come flying out of the plastic tent. He skidded to a halt several feet away.

"General! She's waking!"

Taggart's eyebrows flew into what was left of his hair. "We better hurry then! And get the boys!"

* * *

><p>Colin and Dwayne were sitting in one of the cells of the prison's jails, and though it had been dressed up a bit with a TV and magazines and somewhat more comfortable seating, it still felt like a jail cell. They were effectively trapped here until further notice.<p>

Taggart had corralled them in his tent just a few minutes after the elf had been brought into the station for surgery or something, he hadn't been clear in the details, to explain that it was now out of his hands, and that they were going to be staying here at the station until further notice. He'd allowed them a phone call each to their families and workplaces, to explain that they wouldn't be home for a while, but that was it. Aside from news, which had moved on from the odd occurrence on the interstate once new information hadn't been forthcoming, and re-runs of old shows they could find on basic cable, they were bored out of their minds.

Dwayne had tried to get them a gaming console or maybe even an old computer with no internet, but nothing had shown up yet, even though Talbot had promised that he was working on it when he came down for a visit the other day. Dwayne wasn't even sure what day it was anymore. The soldiers had even taken their watches, since they were digital, and no natural light got down here, since the jail cells were underground.

There was a clamor down the hall, and Dwayne and Colin both stepped out of the cell to see what was going on. They were stuck on this floor, where they had three different cells between the two of them, one for sleeping, one was a makeshift kitchen, and the other was the 'living room', where they'd just been, so they weren't locked in a tiny cell. Just this floor.

The peered down the hallway to see another soldier they didn't recognize come running. He stopped a step or two away from them and beckoned them with a hand. "The General wants you! She's waking up!"

Dwayne glanced at Colin and then back to the soldier. "Okay. Cool."

* * *

><p>Slywyn slowly opened her eyes. For the third(or fourth?) time in recent memory, she awoke feeling like she'd been run over by a mammoth. Or maybe chewed on by a shark. Or maybe a little bit of both. She felt like shit, she quickly decided, and she didn't like it. She also felt strangely naked.<p>

She managed to open an eye and also immediately decided that it was far too bright, in wherever she was. She raised a hand over her head- well, attempted to. She found that she couldn't even manage that. She was trapped in some kind of white, scratchy cloth that she again decided she didn't like- so many things she didn't like about this situation.

She struggled against the itchy fabric for a moment before she finally managed to free an arm. She also noticed that she felt much weaker than she would have liked to feel when waking up in an odd place. She placed an arm over her eyes and opened both of them, now that they were shielded from the sun-like light overhead.

She was in some kind of very strange room. It was very bright, the bed, or whatever it was she was on, was very, very uncomfortable, the blanket itched, and she was cold. This place smelled like death and blood, though she quickly realized it smelled like -her- blood. She frowned at this as she began to remember why she was here in the first place. She'd been shot by one of the strange, smaller Humans, with a gun that she didn't recognize. She certainly couldn't build it, she was sure of that.

She let out a quiet groan and cursed in Darnassian. She felt so weak that even holding her arm over her head was taxing. And when she tried to take a deep breath she had to catch herself because of the pain. _That's because you got yourself shot in the stomach, stupid, _She remembered. She let her arm fall to the bed and squinted her eyes while they continued to adjust to the bright light. She had no idea where she was, she was cold, tired, weak, and for the first time she noticed that there were two Humans holding what looked like clipboards of some kind on the other side of what appeared to be glass.

Today was not going to be a good day. She could feel it.


End file.
